Do you expect me to talk?

Post navigation

…and to be quick about it; there’s another load waiting for the horse.

Does anyone else hear the voice of Sean Connery when putting out the washing… and then reply in the voice of Goldfinger? No? Oh. Just me then.

I have given up feeding the ducks. Ducks are not nice people.

The first batch, the ones that I saw take to the water for the very first time, began with ten. Madam raised three to near-grown size and then reported a couple of days ago with just two. This batch of ten (now eight) were so new that they weren’t even weaned yet, still on mother duck’s milk.

Yesterday I had the two madams, their chicks and three drakes on the canal outside the side-hatch. The drakes were trying to chase away the females, the elder ducklings were setting about and drowning the two-or-three day-old ducklings. The mothers deserted the ducklings and left them to their fate, only returning once they themselves felt comfortable. These tiny things will doubtless grow up to be just as pleasant. I’m finished with feeding ducks.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Give me a nice moorhen any day, they just get on with life, no squabbles.

This morning’s weather was a tad apocalyptic. The canal steameth.

Middlewich Branch Shropshire Union Copyright Ian Hutson 2020

The Cardinal’s third one along. Distances are foreshortened by the tepheloto lensing. There’s about a boat length between me and these damned imposters.

Traffic on the towpath – thanks be to the Canal & River Truss [sic] – remains far higher than in peacetime. All of their corporate advertising and encouragements to come on down and enjoy the empty, otherwise-wasted countryside have not fallen on deaf ears. Once this apocalypse if over – alive or dead, I am going to make a habit of walking within a yard or so of every house in every town. Heck, I’m even going to stop to peer in at the windows.

Work continues – although not apace – on the railway bridge behind. That’s the railway bridge behind my boat, not the railway bridge’s behind.

So far we’ve done lots of brickwork pointing and we’ve put some restorative chalk marks around the three-metre-long, centimetre-wide, “v”-shaped crack in the northern embankment. That ought to hold it, at least until the rain washes the chalk away.

Her Maj’s “government” (all party) continues to rust and decay.

I LOVE the look of this boat. So much care and yet so little care. 🙂

Talk of a lifting of restrictions on Monday – announcement 7pm Sunday! – makes about as much sense as feckle de smock wobnot crunge bignor dhdjugrhveveggggjh.

If the virus is real and out there then it’s still out there and just waiting. Let the hordes (even more) loose (than they have already let themselves) and we’ve just delayed a while before we have another mass infection. I suspect rather that “they” have decided that the economy is worth much more than a few old bastards or the sick, so yah boo sucks, cough cough, hurry up and die for the good of The City The Nation.

Think of the pensions they’ll save, State and private – all of those private funds reverting to their good Eton & Rugby-educated close friends in the City (in England annuity funds do not count as part of the individual’s estate, they just get absorbed into company coffers, wham, bam, thank you suckerrrrr). Cynical me.

The government has already totally lost the (notional) (putative) (unsubstantiated) “confidence” of the electorate, they’re not doing much better now with what can only really be a decision to continue with the cull of the sicko-geriatrics because money, yeah?

I gather from the grapevine that the work chaps involved have ruffled quite a few non-avian feathers in their brief time with us. Let us also just say that Railtrack do not appear to be throwing wild amounts of resources at this work!

Ducks are not pleasant when considered. They prefer rape to consent was my come away when I lived next to a lake. Or perhaps consent in duck world is different. But it always struck me as gang rape. Because it was often a coordinated effort of two males. I suppose that makes for genetic diversity but…. I’ve yet to meet a water fowl that wasn’t just foul. Ducks, geese, swans. All unpleasant except in pictures.